World Summit for Children.

World Summit for Children

The World Summit for Children, held on 29 and 30 September in New York, provided a historic forum for discarding myths about development and proposing new ideas for redressing the story plight of children worldwide.

Seventy-one Heads of State and Government--the largest such gathering ever--assembled at UN Headquarters to throw their countrie's weight and commitment behind this remarkable effort to save the lives of at least third of the 14 million children under the age of five who die each year.

The Summit, proposed last year by six leaders--Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, President Moussa Traore of Mali, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico, then prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson of Sweden--desired "to bring attention and promote commitment, at the highest political level, to goals and strategies for ensuring the survival, protection and development of children as key elements in the socio-economic development of all countries and human society".

After two days of tightly-scheduled formal and informal meetings, the world leaders appended their signatures and moral commitment to a formal document that sets the guidelines for bold new initiatives on children. The World Declaration on the survival, Protection and Development of Children and the Plan of Action for implementing the World Declaration in the 1990s sets a new global agenda for the well-being of children.

'A moral commitment'

The Declaration is a moral and joint commitment, an acknowledgement of the changing international political climate and an exposition of the challenges, tasks and opportunities that lie ahead. The Plan of Action is a practical guide for national governments, international and non-governmental organizations, bilateral aid agencies and other sectors of society to ensure the implementation of the Declaration's specific principles.

The Action Plan sets specific goals for children and development in the next decade:

* Between 1990 and the year 2000, reduction of under-five child morality rate by one third or 70 per 1,000 live-births, whichever is less;

* Reduction of maternal mortality rate by half;

* Reduction of severe and moderate malnutrition among under-five children by half;

* Universal access to safe drinking-water and to sanitary means of excreta disposal;

* By the year 2000, universal access to basic education and completion of primary education by at least 80 per cent of primary school-age children;

* Reduction of the adult illiteracy rate emphasis on female literacy;

* Improved protection of children in especially difficult circumstances.

This extraordinary document is proof of the emergent ethos of a new UN that is focusing more on the qualitative aspects of human development rather than the quantitative indices that for decades have been the marker for global economic progress. By giving development a human face, the summit symbolizes a fundamental shift in attitudes in the way global resources should be allocated.

At the Summit, world leaders established "the principle of first call" for children--a commitment that the essential needs of children should be given high priority in the allocation of resources, in good times or bad, in peace or war.

The costs of implementing the Declaration have been estimated at $20 billion a year for the next decade, including $7.5 billion a year to meet basic health and educational needs. Most of the money is expected to come from developing countries themselves, with $4 billion of annual external assistance needed from industrial countries.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, Co-Chairman of the Summit, said in the General Assembly Hall: "Today may represent the beginnings of a change in the lives of the world's children. Today in this Hall, they may finally have found the voice and the friends they have long been seeking." But the real challenge was political. "Funding", he said, "is important but it is not, in the end, the decisive factor in the war on child suffering. Political will is."

Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar told the world leaders that their Summit represented a commitment at the highest level to build a world order that would guard the most precious resource of the human race: its children. It would be a world not ravaged by violent conflict, disfigured by poverty, plagued by crime or scarred by repression.

Poverty is the main enemy of children, he declared. "Hunger, disease, illiteracy, despair--these constitute the enemy's fearful train." There is no way in which issues relating to children can be segregated from the issues of overall social and economic environment.

"Children personify the world's future. In ensuring their welfare, we transcend all divisions of the present. We participate in the shaping of human destiny. This unique occasion should serve as inspiration to that end", the Secretary-General stated.